Free Tibet: Techung and Rang zen-Independence

When I was in college, I first started seeing the Free Tibet slogans and the Tibetan flag (a sun rising over a mountain peak). Over the years I have loosely followed the Tibetan story, which mostly gets retold in our country when the Dalai Lama comes to America or something happens to Tibet. The history, as I understand it, is that for centuries Tibet was a proud, independent nation governed on the principles of Tibetan Buddhism. In the 1950s, the Chinese made good on their longstanding claim to Tibet and invaded, turning Tibet into a Chinese province. They attempted to usurp the selection process of the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, by proposing their own candidate. This caused the young Dalai Lama (who is believed to be the same spiritual being reincarnated into different bodies throughout history) to flee to India. Today he lives in exile with other exiled Tibetans, while China slowly tries to assimilate Tibet into the rest of China with varying degrees of success.

There are a number of good documentaries about the Dalai Lama and his journey, and others about the Tibetan situation. I have an interesting story about Tibet: my wife's sister-in-law snuck into Tibet in the 70s on a rope bridge across a deep chasm and spent a little bit of time there (the area is generally not open to foreigners without a permit and there was a time when it was not open to Westerners at all).

The music selection for today is by Tibetan artist who goes by the nickname of Techung when he plays music solo, and as Tashi Dhondup Sharzur at other times. He is a second generation Tibetan exile born in Tibet but raised in Dharamsala, India. As an adult he splits his time between Dharamsala and San Francisco. He studied Tibetan music, dance and opera extensively as a child at the Tibetan Institute for Performing Arts, and has become one of the key keepers of Tibetan musical and performing arts traditions. He founded the San Francisco-based Chaksampa Tibetan Dance and Opera Company in 1989, and is known for his collaborative work that explores his own musical heritage and that of other world music traditions. His latest album, Techung-Tibet-Lam La Che: On The Road (2013) features collaborative work with Keb' Mo'.

This song, Rang zen-Independence, is from his 2004 album A Compilation of Tibetan Folk and Freedom Songs.

Ragin' Cajuns: Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys

When I lived in Milwaukee in the late 80s and early 90s, a friend was really into zydeco music.  It was my first introduction to music from Louisiana.  My girlfriend (now my wife and one of the hosts of the Global Music Show) and I were introduced to some zydeco artists through this friend, and went to see Wayne Toups and Zydecajun during a Bastille Days concert.

But my first real introduction to Cajun music occurred when Megan and I lived in San Antonio and drove to Louisiana to meet some friends for camping.  As we drove across western Louisiana, the music on the radio was full of accordion and violin, and the vocals sounded almost like the lonesome twang of country except they were in French.  Then a DJ came on and started talking.  "What's he saying?" I asked Megan.  "I don't know," she replied.  "I thought you knew French!" I exclaimed.  "That's French, but it's no French that I know," Megan said.

After living in New Orleans, I came to appreciate Cajun music, after attending concerts at Tipitinas and attempting to Cajun two-step to the likes of Bruce Daigrepont and other Cajun artists.  While classified by many as a "world" music, I began to see it as a uniquely American music, sung in French but with a lot of rhythms borrowed not only from the old world but also from the new.  It certainly gets your attention, especially when a good, upbeat song comes on.

One of the well-known Cajun bands of Louisiana is Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.  Originally formed in 1988, they have released 10 albums, of which two have been nominated for Grammys in the traditional folk category.  They have gone from being a primarily traditional Cajun band to one that blends their unique personal style, and sometimes a bit of blues, country and rock, with more traditional forms of Cajun music.  The band consists of Steve Riley on accordion, Sam Broussard on guitar, Brazos Huval on fiddle, saxophone and bass, and Kevin Dugas on drums.  Original guitarist Jimmy Domengeaux died in 1999, and co-founder David Greely retired due to hearing problems.

I first heard the band when Megan brought home their double CD The Best of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.  The selection provided here is footage of a Tiny Desk Concert they did for NPR Music in 2011.

Lucha Libre: Los Straitjackets and Dame una Seña

Once I watched a documentary called Super Amigos about some Mexican luchadores (wrestlers) that had taken up the mantle of superheroes.  One took up the rights of animals and called himself Super Animal.  Another was all about the rights of the poor and called himself Super Barrio.  The third was concerned about the environment and called himself Ecologista Universal, and a fourth was a champion of gay rights and called himself Super Gay.  A fifth called himself Fray Tormenta, a priest who took up wrestling and used the profits to build two orphanages.  They traveled across Mexico to bring to light that country's serious social problems.

The only reason I bring this up is that today's featured band, Los Straitjackets, wear Mexican luchador masks as a part of their stage show.  What this is supposed to mean, I'm not sure.  When I saw Super Amigos, I was made aware of the rich and colorful history of Mexican wrestling and the characters of the wrestlers within it.  Luchadores come in two main types, the bad guys who do not play by the rules, and the good guys who are very technical and stay within the rules.  The characters are as well or better known than their American counterparts in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and often take on a heroic persona through their matches, tie in comics and other media.  The mask, while not universally used, is usually a prized possession and losing the mask in a match (an unmasking) is a terrible loss and insult.

I don't know if this is what Los Straitjackets was going for in their costuming, which consists of dark clothing, large medallions and luchador masks.  If it is, they are suggesting that they are heroic rockers, masked crusaders for justice, rough and tough and willing to take all comers.  Or, they could have just been trying to look cool for the stage show.

Los Straitjackets started in Nashville in 1988 and has released 13 albums.  An instrumental band, they began to gain a following after the movie Pulp Fiction brought a surf-oriented sound back in the limelight.  Their stage shows are apparently something to see - only band member Danny Amis speaks and does so in bad Spanish.  Many might remember their appearances on Conan O'Brien's late night show, in particular as his regular holiday band in the late 1990s.

This song, Dame Una Seña (Give Me a Sign), is from their 2007 album Rock en Español, Vol 1.  The album consists of 1950s and 60s English language rock tunes as Spanish language covers.  Vocals are provided by guest vocalists including Little Willie G. of Thee Midniters, Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, and on this song, Big Sandy of Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys.

Wasn't Much Into Elvis, but El Vez? En el Barrio, by El Vez

Elvis was a little before my time.  Born in 1963, I came in on the tail end of the music that defined a generation.  Elvis in the 50s and all the psychedelic rock and protest rock of the 60s only came into my awareness when they were already somewhat antiquated.  My musical tastes ran into the progressive rock of the 70s, a smattering of disco and funk, and finally into some of the new wave of the 80s along with punk and post punk.

Elvis was already old news when I was listening to music.  Sure, I knew Jailhouse Rock and Blue Suede Shoes, but I didn't appreciate them for what they were...they were already oldies but goodies.  But I can say the Elvis song that did make an impression on me was In the Ghetto.  In the Ghetto coincided with the comeback of Elvis in 1969, and I probably heard it later in the 70s on a radio station.  Having only known Elvis through his rockabilly, I didn't know that he could sing songs like that - a song with a story of poverty and hardship.  It might seem trite, but I grew up in a small town and had never considered such things before.  Poverty and ghettos were things that appeared on the nightly news, but were not present in my day to day reality.  The circle of life, poverty, crime and death outlined in the song was something outside my world, but the way Elvis sang it was very compelling and drew your attention.

I also knew about the Elvis impersonators, and even have a friend who played guitar for one in Wisconsin.  But even though I shouldn't have been, I was surprised and taken a little aback to find that there was a Latino version, a man named Robert Lopez who was part of the punk group The Zeros and who became El Vez, the Chicano Elvis.  More than just an impersonator, El Vez also performs other major rock icons including David Bowie, Iggy Pop, John Lennon, and Bob Dylan.  I had no idea about him until a DJ friend gave my wife and I a collection of covers of various song by artists around the world.  This collection had things like The Beatles singing their hits in German, and also foreign artists covering various rock standards.  While listening, when the first chords of En el Barrio came up I recognized it for what it was, and then realized it was not Elvis but someone singing it quite well in Spanish.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find the Spanish version online, but at least I have El Vez singing in English with his backup singers, the Elvettes.

Of course, we don't speak of ghettos anymore, where "colored" people live and work.  Our consciousness has raised so that the ghettos became inner-cities and colored people became black and brown, and the African-Americans and Latinos/Hispanics.  All of that is good, but as one who has lived in the inner-city for more of his adult life than not, the cycle that In the Ghetto and En el Barrio chronicles is still active.  Children are still born, and mommas still cry because they don't have enough to feed them, and sometimes we see, and sometimes we turn our heads and look the other way just like Elvis and El Vez sing.

Bollywood Dreams: The Dirty Picture's Ooh La La

I can't really believe this, but I've never seen a Bollywood movie all the way through.

My wife has seen plenty of them. She traveled in India for a month in the late 1990s, and therefore got a chance to experience Bollywood movies in Indian movie theaters - without subtitles or dubbing mind you. She really enjoyed them, and partly because they often are laid out in a formulaic way so that there is no mistaking what is happening in various parts of a Bollywood movie. And there are always the entertaining song and dance numbers. Some conventions you just know will happen - there will be no kissing so when it appears that a kiss is inevitable, suddenly the cast will break out in song. There will always be a moral, such as a rebellious woman will either be tamed by marriage or tamed by death.

I've seen movies by Indian directors, and movies about India. I've seen Slumdog Millionaire and many Mira Nair films and Deepa Mehta's Indian trilogy, but never an honest-to-God Bollywood spectacular.

But I've seen plenty of Bollywood numbers on video. In 1998 I traveled to Bangladesh and lived there for a month. Bangladeshi Television had one channel, so the rest of their television airwaves was flooded by Indian channels. One of the favorites was Indian MTV, and the videos shown on that channel were always song and dance numbers culled from Bollywood movies. I must say that I really enjoy watching them. The newer movies have music that ranges from electronica to driving percussion, and yet still that Indian sound anchored usually by a back and forth between a woman and a man in voices that sound like they could be wailing but are technically doing quite a lot. The dances always involve a lot of personnel, color, costumes and flirtatious glances between the two principles.

Today's video is a song called Ooh La La, and it is from a 2011 Bollywood production called The Dirty Picture. The movie is morality tale based on the life of a South Indian actress named Silk Smitha. Smitha died in 1996 at the age of 36, but she became one of the most sought-after Indian erotic actresses in history. She was apparently an accomplished actress and her non-erotic roles landed her critical acclaim, but because of her looks and her erotic success she was typecast into what some Indians considered "soft porn;" such roles often had her playing a secret agent wearing skimpy bikinis and beating up large, thuggish men. She had incredible audience-drawing power, such that one critic remarked that a film could be sold by the addition of a Smitha song. After trying to break into film production, and suffering financial problems, she apparently fell into depression, and her death at 36 is suspected to have been suicide by hanging.  

The Dirty Picture follows the life of an actress named Silk who breaks into movies by adding sex and spice, much to the chagrin of director who is saddled with her. She also has numerous affairs with men, and in the ends up an alcoholic chain smoker with many debts who is reduced to doing a porn film. Like the Silk of real life, she commits suicide at the end of the film. A sad tale to be sure, but what would such movies be without some drama, and part of the Bollywood formula is drama. I will have to make sure I see one to the end, and soon.

Cosmopolitan and Sophisticated: Italy's Mau Mau and Venus Nabalera

When I first heard Venus Nabalera, by the Italian group Mau Mau, I wasn't really very versed in world music. I believe that I started listening to what is commonly labeled as world music or global music as the result of a happy accident. I was living in New Orleans in the early 2000s, and my journalist wife was tasked to write some entries on a series exploring the places where New Orleans musicians had lived. I forget which musician, a trumpeter who lived in the early 1900s, she was writing about when we headed to the Bywater neighborhood to look at an address, but we made the acquaintance of the woman who lived in the house that he had lived in for a little while. The woman turned out to be the wife of Dan Storper, the man who founded Putumayo World Music. They had bought the house and were in the process of restoring it. She gave us three or four Putumayo CDs, and I believe one of them had Venus Nabalero on it.

I remember being surprised that 1) this was an Italian band and 2) that I liked it, along with the rest of the music she had given us. I shouldn't have been surprised. In the 1990s I had become turned on to Celtic music at Milwaukee's Irish Fest when I sat in the audience as a new group named Capercaille played and blew me away with their modern take on traditional Scottish/Celtic music. My naive idea of Italian music involved accordions and violins and probably some mixture of Dean Martin and Louis Prima ("When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie..." or "Buona Sera Senorita Buona Sera...") song by a guy in a checkered apron. So hearing a group like Mau Mau do a song that was vaguely reminiscent of Brazilian music I had heard by chance, but sounding so modern, made me rethink my stereotypes and preconceptions. I listened to that Putumayo album, and the others, over and over. For the first time in my life, I felt sophisticated - like I shouldn't be privy to this type of music but I was. I also felt cosmopolitan, and vaguely like I had discovered a secret nobody else knew about.  I still feel that way sometimes.

In the years since, whenever I hear a new group that really captures my fancy, I have that same feeling that Venus Nabalera and other new world songs give me for a fleeting moment.  There is nothing more satisfying when you feel  like you've discovered something.  And there is nothing more wonderful, after you've savored it, to share it with others in the hopes that they will find it just as amazing as you have.

So, here is Venus Nabalera by Mau Mau, one of the songs that started me on this world music adventure so many years ago.  Just a few words about Mau Mau.  They are a group that formed in Turin in 1991, and they have released six albums to date.  Their name, in the Piedmont region dialect, can mean "one who comes from afar."   The name also references the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya that challenged the British colonial rule.  Venus Nabalera is from their 2000 release Safari Beach.

Welcome to Your World Music Show

This blog has come about because of the inadequacies of Facebook. My name is Michael Hess. I'm a staff person at a university, an adjunct professor of political science, and a music lover. My wife, Megan Kamerick, is a journalist. A few years ago, she was asked to serve as a backup DJ for a weekly world music show on our local public radio station. While both of us loved music, world music was not a genre that we were very familiar with. However, my wife is always game to try something new and she enlisted my help to find music. We were very quickly surprised by the breadth of world music. Today my wife is one of four regular rotating DJs on the show and I serve as her program assistant, music procurator and occasional replacement if she is unavailable. One of the things that has become apparent is that we LOVE discovering this music. We have become familiar with many of the greatest names in music that Americans have never heard from, as well as exciting new bands and solo artists that emerge every day from places outside of the United States. America may be the entertainment center of the world, but there are many amazing things happening with music in both other places in the first and third worlds. There are fusions and collaborations, reinterpretations of traditional folk musics and new musics being invented all the time. We have been privileged to expand our musical horizons and open our minds and ears to sounds that would not come to us over the airwaves in our home country.

For a couple of years, I have been maintaining a Facebook page called KUNM Global Music First Monday. On the page, I post a daily song about a world musician or band and a piece of work that he or she has done. Despite our exhortations for people to "like" us and get exposed, we only have 81 followers and, according to the statistics, it's the rare day that anyone actually tries out the music. So, I'm casting the net to the wider world in the hopes that there are more people that will find us on this platform and who may be willing to also open up their ears and their minds.

I once had an argument with a person about world music. She maintained that it wasn't interesting because she couldn't understand the lyrics. Here's a little secret that I've learned - you don't need to understand the lyrics to be moved by the music, by the longing or happiness or sadness in the singer's voice, the same emotions in the the way the kora player, the fiddle player, the guitar player, the Uilleann pipe player, or any of the other musicians at play.

By the way, you might be interested in the radio station that hosts us and our show. We air on KUNM, which is one of Albuquerque's public radio stations serving North and North Central New Mexico at 89.9 FM and at some other frequencies through translators. We air mostly on the first Monday of each month from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time (USA). My hope is that with this page, I'll be able to expand on the Facebook page by doing a little more exploration into the music and also provide some commentary on how the music and the artist makes me feel. We purchase at least 10 to 15 new songs for each show, plus we play music from the station's collection. My wife and I have built up quite a collection of our own, and I will draw on all of these for this page.

So, let's start this and see if we can build a small community around the joy of music from around the world. As KUNM's motto "News and music that connect" suggests, we can come together in our enjoyment of music. I hope you find this site interesting, and please let me know if you come by by leaving a comment, even if it a suggestion or a correction! Michael Hess